Archive for the Category ◊ Computer Science ◊

20 Dec 2009 Technology Tutorials
Author: Dominic Tremblay |  Category: Computer Science, Technology  | One Comment

If you are looking for easy to understand tutorials to teach applications that students K-12 are most likely to use, “Technology Tutorials” is a great site offered by Internet4classrooms. The tutorials include applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Dreamweaver, Internet Explorer, Inspiration, Kidspiration and also the Mac and Windows operating systems. These tutorials are not video tutorials, but include text and screenshots.

03 Dec 2009 Google Wave
Author: Dominic Tremblay |  Category: Computer Science, Technology  | One Comment

I know this resource may be cliché, but I think there is something really great about Google Wave for education. If you haven’t entered the wave so far, I recommend you watch this YouTube video explaining how it works. In short, Google Wave is like e-mail, chat and collaboration on steroids. It will let your students discuss remotely in a better way than actual chat platform. With Google Wave, they can share a document and all work on editing it at the same time. It is the perfect tool for a brainstorming session. At the end, it is very easy to summarize all the ideas from all the participants in one document. One of the plugin even let students speaking different languages collaborate together with instantaneous automatic translation. It is important to understand that Google Wave is still a preview not open to the public in general. There are still bugs and there are not many plugins available so far. If you need an invite because you want to use it after watching the video, please feel free to contact me on my Facebook fan page.

26 Oct 2009 Boolify.org
Author: Dominic Tremblay |  Category: Computer Science, Information Technology, Internet  | One Comment

boolifyBoolify.org is a very cool little tool to help your student learn about boolean searches. There are lessons including a YouTube video about boolean operators as well as Microsoft Words documents about Using Basic Boolean Search Operators, Refining search results, Using Advanced Google Features and Evaluating Websites and other information sources. Then the student can use a nice drag and drop interface to create his or her own boolean search using AND, NOT, OR and URL. A great tool for librarians or computer science teachers.

28 Apr 2009 Presentations ETC
Author: Dominic Tremblay |  Category: Computer Science, Information Technology, Internet  | 2 Comments

presentationsAre you getting bored with the few backgrounds and templates that are included with Microsoft PowerPoint or with Apple Keynote? Presentations ETC might just be the website you need to spice up your presentations. This site is totally free for teachers to use and the  license agreement is very friendly. On this website, you will find over 20,000 background to use in your presentation in both 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 formats. Categories include nature, metal, architecture, stone, texture, technology and urban.

If you prefer to have a full template instead of just a simple bacgkround, you can also find one on this websites. It includes over 30 templates for both PowerPoint for the Mac and Windows. If you are using Apple Keynote, it also includes over 30 templates compatible with Keynote. The website is Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology (College of Education, University of South Florida)

10 Mar 2009 The Common Craft Show
Author: Dominic Tremblay |  Category: Computer Science  | Leave a Comment

If you are trying to teach modern computer science concepts to your students, especially those that have to do with web 2.0 in your computer science classroom, you will probably like The Common Craft Show. It is a series of videos produced with a white board and a few drawings on paper. But the simplicity works well as it makes concepts that are somewhat complex easier to understand. The videos are said to be in plain English so even your grandma could understand concepts like social media, twitter, web search strategy, phishing scams, podcasting, online photo sharing or blogs. The free versions of the videos are for “non-commercial” use, meaning that commerical organizations can’t display the videos without their permission. However, if you need to use them for commercial use, there is a video store where you can purchase a license. I hope you will like these little videos… I do!

07 Feb 2009 EduTube : The YouTube of Education
Author: Dominic Tremblay |  Category: Computer Science, Lesson Planning, Multimedia  | Leave a Comment

If you use YouTube to look for educational videos to use in your classroom, you might be interested in using EduTube. It is like YouTube, without all the cut cate videos or teenagers doing dangerous stunts. Videos are not hosted by EduTube, but are categorized and filtered by this site. Original videos are hosted by video sharing websites like Youtube. It is an excellent way to find resources for teachers and students. You can also use it as a way for your students to search videos ensuring they only have access to quality educational videos. It is also possible to contribute to the website by recommending videos or links to educational videos. The interface is available in various languages.

02 Jun 2007 Another source of clipart for schools
Author: Dominic Tremblay |  Category: Computer Science, Information Technology  | Leave a Comment

“Clipart 4 schools” is another good source of free clipart for students and teachers to use in the classroom. The images are provided by Jupiter Images and may be used freely as long as it is for non-profit.

The images are not full high resolution, however, they are available at 640 x 480 which is appropriate for most worksheets or educational websites. The images are available in categories such as agriculture, animals, cartoons, computers, food, Holidays, household, landscape, medical, music, nature, people, religions and many more. The interface is available in about 10 languages including English, Spanish and French. There is also a collection of animated GIF for your school or classroom website. Be careful, there is a lot of links to commercial clipart libraries as well!

31 May 2007 Free School Clipart
Author: Dominic Tremblay |  Category: Computer Science, Lesson Planning  | Leave a Comment

Here is a quick tip for today. If you need free clipart for your class and you don’t need hi-resolution, this website contains many royalty-free cliparts that you may use for worksheets, lesson plans, quizzes, websites, and other classroom needs or the students may use in their assignments. However, the liscence agreement, requests that you link back to the « Free Clipart at School » website.

There are multiple subjects available including sports, books, religion, money, military, medical, science, animals, plants and computers. The cliparts are very small in size with low resolution. They are ok to be used on the Web or in small formats on worksheets, however, if you enlarge them, they will become pixilated.